Price Increases - How Are Your Sales?

Maybe I’m not your target market. I don’t work on websites often but I was ready to spend 35 to play around with a template. As I mentioned earlier I came back ready to buy and it was 50 the next day. So now I needed to do some research to make sure this template would work for me. I sent a message to the author asking one question but I never heard back, it’s been a while now. At 35 I wouldn’t bother asking any questions, I’d just figure it out on my own. So since I didn’t hear anything back I moved on, ended up paying 180 for a magento template from another place and had it running the very next day and had tons of support. I don’t see working on any other websites for at least a year so I probably won’t ever be back here. The template here was probably the wrong choice for me anyways and if the author would have answered my question it would have validated that. But the author lost an easy 35 that I would have spent on the template had it been priced as was a week ago.

graphic4444 said
Envato/Mark/whoever – any feedback on support policies that should be enforced/made mandatory here for theme buyers? If you’re charging a lot, like $40-$50 for a single theme, that’s necessary I believe (or at least, good customer service). Authors are busy, but so are your competitors’ sites, which have active forum support for themes bought in membership/subscription packages.

I am pretty sure you will never see this implemented because its would be impossible to measure every author’s level or support.

There is a very clear distinction between (needless to say) necessary support to fix some issues in a template (if persist), and an additional support in helping a buyer setting up his theme (in which your example falls in: “how can I add a 2-pixel border to the left table in your (xyz) theme”).

I guess its up to a buyer to find authors which are able and willing to provide significant amount of later.

graphic4444 said
as one of envato’s longtime top buyers…. most of the WP theme membership sites give you 50+ themes for just $70-$100 or whatever, so the big massive price increase is a bad idea; us buyers will just buy less here. greed is not good.

I do not know how the pricing here increased but I guess the old files (that doesn’t have as many features as fresh ones) still should have same old price. The new ones that meets current standards and trend with massive features deserves the $50 range. Without increment, in an year or so the authors will be forced to increase quantity of release but not quality; not going to be anyone’s benefit.

Coming to the point of competitive prices, there is a limit for considering others who offers different pricing schemes. Under-cut exists everywhere and that doesn’t mean everything should have downward arrows. At some stage, prices can’t be relative to the competitors to avoid loosing meaning on invested time and resource.

In fact the Site Templates and few categories on CodeCanyon also deserves little bit increment; (not just for profit but to manage apparent value due to increased device compatibilities) however the approach of change everything in single day policy is not a way to go. Doing so may again backfire the authors in the form of increased support level expectations.

good point, vf… agree that advanced templates (with leading-edge sliders, responsive, world-class look, advanced features and functions) should be priced higher, and older/stale templates priced lower.

From a buyer’s standpoint, getting “how to modify” level of support from template authors is fairly important, because I don’t have time to go figure out what line of php code or advanced css styling parameters needs to be changed to modify the template… normally that level of support isn’t needed for other envato marketplaces, but for some WP themes it would help.

Main thing is, your competition, the WP theme membership subscription sites offer dozens of mostly-mediocre (with a few really good ones) templates, but they include same-day or 24-hour support from the template authors for “how do I do (xyz) in your template?” in their support forums and they’re priced at less than $100 for dozens of templates, which include unlimited domain license. So the envato pricing is a lot higher, and support a lot lower, and licensing a lot more restrictive here.. so I’d recommend thinking about things before hiking prices way up, since buyers have choices at many WP membership subscription sites, to get themes + better support + unlimited domain license for a lot less per theme. Check your competition, and consider the ‘big picture’, for better author sales here, is my honest idea.

graphic4444 said
For example if I need to ask “how can I add a 2-pixel border to the left table in your (xyz) theme”?

This is a wrong example that doesn’t have anything to do with support. You’re talking here about customization/styling, which is done through CSS , which is, as we all know, the standard.

Authors are not required to give classes about web development or CSS . I don’t know what is your knowledge level, but these questions are simply annoying. if you’re building a website for 3rd party client, learn something and justify the money your client pays you.

I do a ton of middleware and dev work—and I also buy a lot of WP themes. I think I can see things from both sides.

@graphic – you are lucky that the sites you buy themes from answer these simple layout questions. I don’t think that it is the author’s job to help you make graphical changes—I don’t expect this level of support unless I am paying for a support package (which I dont). Really there should be no graphic support unless there is a bug, compatibility issues, or if the author hides some layout stuff in functions or javascript.

@VF – You bring up a good point about support yet you don’t answer it. There needs to be a statement about support levels. Like author has so many days to fix minor bug, so many days for admin issues, customer has right to get refund if basic WP functionality is not working.

I hate when Envato tells me to “work with the author”. If the theme doesn’t work why does a buyer need to work with the author? There needs to be clarity on what is acceptable or not. If someone drew a line in the sand and said if you have these bugs your users can get refund then authors would eventually not release themes with those issues.

It is seriously a joke. I mean a lot of authors can’t even fill out their theme info right.

To sum it up. TF has some very crappy authors. I don’t know the percentages but it is more than 20% and less than 90% haha. These authors are getting their themes approved. More often than not, they are helpful but they do not have the ability to fix things (or they wouldn’t have released it in the condition). TF just lets them keep selling. Even after you get a refund on something because its broke… still for sale. This means that most buyers will scrutinize and associate all of the great authors with the crappy authors – you are all part of TF. As a buyer I have bought 3 themes in the past month at other sites when I wanted something from here more because I am never sure if the themes from here will work—and at $50 I can surely get a working theme somewhere else (might not be as “cool” but it will work).

And let me add – there is nothing worse than buying a theme for $50 and working on a site for 5-6 days and then noticing there are major bugs (admin panel not working in IE9 , feautured images not working, no post truncating, subcategories not working were from my past two buys here).

Yea there is something worse—Envato telling you “work with the author”.

From there I either have to go through crappy code and make the php/jscript/html fixes or basically start over with new theme. I have gone through this roughly half the time I have bought on TF (maybe it is bad luck or maybe I am trying to buy themes too cutting edge) but this only happens 10% on other sites. It really sucks when a client is monitoring and sees their site 60-70% done and you have to tell them that you have to start over.

djmceltic said
And let me add – there is nothing worse than buying a theme for $50 and working on a site for 5-6 days and then noticing there are major bugs (admin panel not working in IE9 , feautured images not working, no post truncating, subcategories not working were from my past two buys here).

Yea there is something worse—Envato telling you “work with the author”.

From there I either have to go through crappy code and make the php/jscript/html fixes or basically start over with new theme. I have gone through this roughly half the time I have bought on TF (maybe it is bad luck or maybe I am trying to buy themes too cutting edge) but this only happens 10% on other sites. It really sucks when a client is monitoring and sees their site 60-70% done and you have to tell them that you have to start over.

As an author here who tries to give best support possible (but sometimes fails ) it’s upsetting to see that there are so many author who doesn’t care about it. It affects all of us as we can see. But on the other hand – that’s why there are comments under each item and ratings, if you’re unsure about author, you can always check his attitude to customers by reading comments section. But that unfortunately only works for authors with more than one fresh theme.

There are very good authors on here that I have a lot of trust for. But their themes don’t always match what client is looking for. I now tend to not trust any author on here unless I have worked with their theme.

It is funny that you bring up comment section. I have witnessed 3 or 4 times over the past month seeing a comment about an author not answering email or major issues with theme, seeing it “flagged”, and then it disappears. This makes me trust the TF process/staff less. I don’t read 100s of comment sections and I have seen this multiple times.

TF is worried about short-term money too much. If you make authors pay for mistakes (by refunding clients quickly when there are major bugs or issues) then you will have much more sales in the long run. If I were running TF I would tell my authors – if you list something as compatible, if you show something, it must work. All native WP features must work. If it doesn’t work your client will get a refund. If we get x number of complaints from client then your theme is flagged. If we get x number of complaints then your theme is pulled. This attitude would lead to good authors making more money and in the long run TF having more trust with buyers. I have spent over $300 the past month on other sites (with probably worse themes but again they work). I am pretty close to giving up on pay themes and just buy the hell out of plugins (never had issues with codecanyon – probably because crappy coders don’t try their hand at plugins).

djmceltic said
...(never had issues with codecanyon – probably because crappy coders don’t try their hand at plugins).